


Fret

by listlessness



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Fairly Gen, M/M, Multi, Nancy POV, Super innocent, aromantic!nancy, pre-stonathan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-26
Updated: 2019-02-26
Packaged: 2019-11-06 00:33:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17929379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/listlessness/pseuds/listlessness
Summary: College looms and high school fades and Nancy waits.





	Fret

**Author's Note:**

  * For [brokenpromisesandhope](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokenpromisesandhope/gifts).



> The final fic for a prompt that Tea sent me. I promised I'd get through them and I delivered, yooo.
> 
> The prompt was - 
> 
> _'I wish I could hate you._
> 
> Unbeta'd like the rest, written in one sitting. This could kinda be considered to be the same verse adjacent as [One-Hit Wonder (With Two)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13112907) (at least in terms of characterisation).

Nancy stretched and sighed and sank back against the bed. To her right, Steve was plucking on a guitar that he had found for sale somewhere in the city, while to her left, Jonathan sat on the ground opposite her bookshelf and poked through what was on display on the shelves. The lowest shelves held books from her childhood, things that Nancy told herself she'd throw out but she still kept for nostalgia.

High school was done. The summer was hot. College loomed on the horizon, her acceptance letter sent in the mail by her mother. 

She hitched up the middle of her shirt and flapped it about, hoping to circulate some air against her sweltering skin. The slightly out of tune melody that Steve was trying to pluck on the guitar was grating on her. Occasionally, Jonathan would cough, clear his throat and sniff, a noise that had her want to throw a pillow in his direction. Maybe she'd even fling one at Steve's head. 

The soaring summer heat had her stuck to the bed, though. Her arms lay stuck by her sides, even the effort to fan herself with the front of her shirt suddenly too much. She heaved a sigh, shut her eyes, and tried to will a cold breeze into the room. 

'I wish I could hate you.' 

The continuous plinking from the guitar went on to her right, while somewhere to her left there was a sniff and a clearing throat. 

'Why?' 

The guitar playing didn't stop when Steve asked. Jonathan sniffed. Neither seemed all that flustered by her remark, though Nancy supposed that they were both used to it. They all had their bouts of melodrama, their adolescent angst making every decision seem all the more important and dreadfully overwhelming. She wondered sometimes, in her private and hidden moments, if the Upside Down had effected their relationships, their pubescent development, their future lives. She wondered if she cared. 

'You're both so annoying.' 

'Speak for yourself.' 

Nancy, having shut her eyes and tossed an arm over her head, dared to crack open an eyelid and look sidelong at Jonathan. He had finally selected a book- _Rilla of Ingleside_. He was reading the books according to publication date, not chronological order. He had said it was inauthentic to read them otherwise. 

'I'm not annoying. You both just don't want to grow up.' 

'Says the one who still has childish books on her shelf,' Steve drawled. He seemed to have figured out the opening notes of _She's A Rainbow_. 

'They're not childish,' Jonathan protested. 'Some consider them literature.' 

The guitar playing was finally ceased. Nancy looked over, feeling her hair stick to her brow and the nape of her neck. She could feel warm puddles of sweat forming underneath her knees and the small of her back. If either of the boys peeled her off her bed, she would swear that would be a mark on the duvet in the shape of her body. 

She wished they had gone to Steve's house so they could splash in his pool. None of them, though, had dared to enter it since that fateful night so many years ago. Even Steve, she felt, hadn't so much as dipped his feet into it. 

'You thought _The Breakfast Club_ was trash instead of a remarkable insight into the lives and walls put up by teenagers in a society- ' 

'Oh, quit your pseudo-intellectual bullshit.' 

'In a society that forces us to bend to the status quo!' Steve finished, waving the guitar above his head. 

'You can't even _spell_ status quo.' 

'Spelling isn't necessary for- ' 

Nancy groaned and rolled onto her stomach. It was hot. Stifling. She wished they'd go back to the music and coughing. The squabbles always peaked when the heat was high, the outdoors oppressing and air thick. She rubbed her feet together, her ankles, her calves and knees, knobbly and hard. 

Behind her, above her, the argument petered out. She didn't know how it finished, if it even had or if it would be resumed at a later, cooler date, like so many of their shallow disagreements did. She sometimes wondered if they secretly enjoyed them. She sometimes wondered if they secretly wanted to date each other as much as they secretly both dated her. 

The end of the bed sank down. She recognised Steve's heavier weight, the way he liked to sit far back. After a beat, the other side shifted. Jonathan always perched on the very edge, as though he was ready to leap away at the slightest moment. Nancy wasn't listening; she was waiting. 

After a moment, the plinking of the strings from the guitar started again. It was quieter. Gentler. A good few seconds passed, before there were some whispers. The strumming started again, uncertainly, cautiously. Looking over her shoulder, Nancy watched as Steve guided Jonathan's hands over the guitar, directing them across the frets. It was in these quiet moments that she wondered why they put up such a fight, why they refused to admit they could get along, that they could be friends. Maybe more than friends. 

'There, that's it,' Steve said, as Jonathan began to strum the start of a song Nancy faintly recognised. 

Laying quiet and still between them, shifting a little onto her side so she could better see them, Nancy watched as Steve and Jonathan somehow managed to get a rhythm going on the guitar. It was a little out of tune and definitely out of time, but they managed to figure it out. 

Maybe this would all end by the time summer faded away. Maybe their playful fights would grow serious. Maybe Nancy would grow bored of them. Maybe they'd get fed up with her and her moods and her flight attitude. 

Or maybe it wouldn't. 

But that was then and this was now and the humidity had her stuck to the bed. It wasn't a completely terrible place to be. She was content to stay here for as long as she could.


End file.
